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Saturday 30 March 2013

What is Kim Jong Un up to?


Piles of comment and analysis of the North Korean sabre-rattling at the moment. Here, here and here for example.

It would be interesting to know the advice being given to our leaders, speaking of which, I wonder how much sniggering there is over Kim Jong Un’s military capabilities as compared to the rhetoric. Behind closed doors - quite a bit  I suspect.

Maybe he is being led by the nose into a face-losing debacle because some of those around the throne don’t fancy another fifty years of him. Maybe the North Korean leadership is demanding to be taken seriously. Who knows?

Without an informer inside the Kim regime, we are in the dark as to motives and all we can do is set out possibilities. Somebody may well have that informer on the inside. China or South Korea seem to be the most likely possibilities here.

What are North Korea’s military options? I’m a military novice, but I don’t see how they can have any. Do they want their pathetic infrastructure and chunks of military capability to disappear overnight in a hail of cruise missiles? 

I don’t think they do. 

They don't care what their own people think at any level, but losing face is not an option. They may also be mad of course. That's always a worry.

4 comments:

Mark Wadsworth said...

Plan A, which has sort of worked for S Korea for the past 60 years is play along with the N Korean regime. This has however been a disaster for the people of N Korea.

Plan B is keep doing Plan A until the regime crumbles of its own accord.

Plan C is to assume that when it crumbles - as it might be doing right now, hence the sable lattring - that it will go out with a bang not a wimper (and these regimes usually go out with a horrible drawn out bang - the north east European communist regimes and Tunisia recently are the only ones who went out with any sort of dignity).

Plan D is to try and hasten that big horrible bang on the assumption that the sooner it happens, the sooner we can get started on sorting things out again.

Plan E is to hasten it very gently, so that no blame attaches to you afterwards. So full scale military attack is off the cards.

And so on all the way to Plan Z.

Clearly, the S Koreans, Japanese and Yanks have worked out some sort of plan, the challenge for the likes of thee and me is to work out what it is or how far through the alphabet they have got.

A K Haart said...

Mark - I'm sure they have a plan and the North Koreans may well know what it is. They may see themselves in some kind of endgame where fifty more Kim years is not an option.

My views are just guesses, but I feel Kim is possibly being nudged into a situation where he loses face.

banned said...

Such a shame that the Kim clan are to be wiped out by the CIA next Tuesday.
6* General Field Marshal Wan King will fail in his attempt to provide the next ruling dynasty but not before he hires Haliburton and G4S to provide security for the Serene Republics fabled Worhers Paradise Camps.

A K Haart said...

banned - General Wan King seems to have settled on Blighty as his preferred power base.